* * * * *
I awoke that Sunday morning, bleary-eyed. My wife and daughter were already at church. I didn't particularly care. I didn't believe in their God anymore.
I sat up in my bed and rubbed my eyes with my palms. The curtains were drawn, and sunlight poured into the room. Outside in the yard, there stood a small swing set for my daughter, and it looked like it was time to rake the leaves again. I hated the fall. But I knew as soon as I got started raking, I wouldn't mind so much, or at all, for that matter.
Still in my boxers, I headed to the kitchen, where I promptly cooked some breakfast, bacon and eggs. I didn't feel like doing the yard right away so I read the paper instead. They hadn't come home, yet, so I assumed they were out shopping. Three hours had passed since they would have gotten to church. I got dressed and went outside.
Something felt funny, wrong. Like there was something missing. As if something had been torn off the face of the planet. The air smelled different. The grass felt different between my toes. I didn't know what was going on. I turned the corner of the house, and saw that my wife's car was still in the driveway. I went back inside to see if she had just gotten home, but there was no sign of her.
Confused, I called her cell phone - I knew she had it on her, even if she went to church, even if it was off in there - and it started ringing back in our bedroom. I headed toward the room, and passed my daughter's room on the way. Stepping inside, the pink walls seemed a vivid crimson color, almost like that of blood. The room was chilly, and I retreated back to my own room, to find that both my wife and daughter were, indeed, gone.
I went to the front door intending to get in the car and drive around looking. When I opened the door, my daughter's head was on the ground next to my wife's, and both bodies were pinned to the door with long knives. I vomited, right there on the porch. All the neighbors at church, so of course no one came to tell me. This was the Bible Belt. Either that, or they thought we were possessed, or something, and therefore refused to come near our house, and probably took my family's death as a good sign.
Blood was smeared all over the doorjamb, in different symbols that I recognized, but didn't remember what they meant, or where they were from. I had a vague, suspicion, though. But it was a matter of remembering. Both my wife and daughter were spread-eagled on the door, my daughter on my wife's stomach, both impaled with the same long objects.
I dry heaved for a minute, and then cried. Whoever did this would pay. Severely.
* * * * *
Two Years Later
I sat in my doctor's office. Therapy was supposed to help. I didn't think it was going anywhere, though. I found myself in Kate's office week after week, month after month, wondering what the hell I was doing there. After all, I knew that history could not be erased. Nothing in this or any world could bring my family back. But supposedly, therapy would give me some sort of "closure," whatever the hell that was.
"Damien?" Kate asked. When I didn't respond, she scribbled on her notepad. The fool. Probably upping my meds again. Four months prior, I had been diagnosed with clinical depression. Not that that, or the diagnoses of bipolar disorder and disassociative identity disorder, meant anything to me. And besides, none of the meds helped, anyway.
"Damien?" she repeated.
This time I looked up. "Yes?" I replied complacently.
She looked down, and began, "Damien, I know you don't want to hear this, and I know it's not gonna help for me to say it, but?"
"Continue," I urged.
Looking me in the eyes, she finished, "You need to at least try to get past this. I know there's nothing anyone can say or do to change?what happened." As I watched her, the nervous movements of her hands and the pen she held, and her thick Carolinian accent began to aggravate me. "But the only way you can pull out of this?this depression?is to realize that this is in no way your fault."
My eyes shot from her frivolously moving hands to her face. "You think I don't know that? You think I haven't fucking tried?" I was almost yelling. "This is my fault, and you and I both know that! I don't fucking care if the case is unsolved. I don't fucking care if no one else on this godforsaken planet gives two shits about what happened, but the only fucking way I'm ever gonna fucking get past this is if I know who the motherfucker was that did it!"
"Damien?"
"Don't fucking interrupt me!" I interjected. "They did this to hurt me. Kate, I've had a lot of fucking enemies in the past, and I've done a lot that would merit someone like me, death." By this time I was standing up and waving a finger in her face. "Don't try to tell me it's not my fault," I growled.
As I turned to sit back down, she calmly resumed, startling me with her urgency. "Damien, it's also your fault that you haven't tried to find out who it was." The arrogance of that bitch! "Now I really shouldn't be telling you this, but you cannot rely on the police to do this for you."
I looked at her incredulously, but she went on. "Trust me on this, Damien. Nine years ago, I had a husband killed just as brutally. I still have not found out who killed him. But the police closed the case, and that's all there was to it."
Sitting down, humbled, I asked, "What happened?"
Kate stood and went to the window. "The same damned thing. I know why it was done, but I have yet to know who. And I suspect that it was the same person."
I opened my mouth to speak, but still at the window, she said, "Time's up. I'll talk to you about this next week. I'm?I'm not prepared to, right now."
Quietly, I got up and left, wondering what brought this about. I had been seeing Kate for a year and a half. But I then realized that she knew almost every intimate detail of my life, and I didn't know jack shit about hers.
I arrived home that evening, and ordered some sesame chicken and beef with broccoli from the Bamboo Express. I needed some sort of comfort food, and Chinese was just the ticket. I sat quietly for the next fifteen minutes waiting for the food to come. I handed the delivery boy twenty bucks and told him to keep the change, even though the meal was only $8.50.
I ate in silence. I didn't feel like watching television or listening to the radio. Too many thoughts were running through my mind, and I couldn't keep them still if I tried. I finished my dinner and sat at the computer and typed. It was the first time in several months that I had written in my journal. But it was also the first time in even longer that I had genuinely felt good since before the incident. It was nice to get something written down, to get some stuff off my chest, even if I had no clue what it was that I was writing.
I thought about what had happened earlier that day, and before I realized it, I had typed several pages, and it was two in the morning. My eyes and hands hurt, so I decided it was time for a cigarette, and then for bed.
I retired to the bedroom, and lay sleepless for what seemed like hours. I couldn't stand being like this. But what I could stand even less was the silence of being alone. I resolved that I was going to do something about it. And then I slept, and for the first time in two years, it wasn't interrupted or unrestful.
* * *
I got up the next morning refreshed and determined. Although I didn't know it at the time, that was one hell of a lot more than could have been said about Kate's morning. While I was in a state that could have been classified as manic, she was not in any mood that was anywhere near congruent with mine. I was on top of the world she wanted to be buried in at the moment. I knew that, for once, my week was going to go well, but it never occurred to me that her life was going to be a living hell for the six days until we saw each other again.
I thought about Helen, my wife, and April, my daughter, and convicted myself to thinking?knowing?that I would resolve this issue. I went to the closet, opened the door, and pulled out a small box of mahogany. It still smelled as sweet as it had the day we bought it. Sitting on the edge of the bed, I opened it. Inside were symbols of our most precious memories: the ribbon we wore at our hand fasting before we got married in the Church; the ultrasound pictures of our child; photographs and postcards from various vacations; and finally, the news articles from the incident. It took all I had not to weep as I came across her wedding band at the bottom of the box. But a single hot tear found its way down my unshaven face. I sifted through the remainder of the contents of the box, and replaced everything but the ring.
Clutching it in a white-knuckled fist, I made my way to the kitchen and took a length of black cord from the drawer. I threaded it through the ring, and tied it around my neck next to my pentacle. "So much for protection," I muttered as I fingered it and sighed. "So much for protection."
I turned and retreated back to the bedroom and replaced the box to its place at the top of the closet. Then, I sat on the bed and buried my face in my hands and cried.
* * * * *
Kate returned to work the next morning feeling miserable. She had cancelled all her appointments following Damien's the day before; she knew she wouldn't be able to handle the emotional stress of her clients on top of her own. Sleep didn't come easily for her, the night before, either. All she knew was that somehow she had to make it through the next week.
As she walked into her building, her receptionist, Neil, bobbed his head in greeting, to which she replied, somewhat disheveled and sleep-deprived, "Good morning, Neil."
"How are you this fine day, Dr. Wilcox?"
Stopping dead in her tracks, the only word that came across her mind to accurately describe her state was "grey." And that was exactly how she replied before continuing on her way to her office.
Perplexed, Neil shrugged off her almost-mechanical word, but something nagged at him, telling him that she was more than "grey," and closer to "black." It was like her shadow had left her behind and decided to cling to his, to weight him down. He stood and went to her door.
Hesitantly, he knocked. "Dr. Wilcox?" There was no answer. He knocked again. "Dr. Wilcox? Kate, are you all right in there?"
A small "no" that Neil almost didn't catch wavered through the air. Curious, he opened the door. "Kate?" he asked softly.
She was sitting in the corner on the floor sobbing, her face buried in her crossed arms. "Go away," she said mournfully. He took a step forward, and she screamed, "Go away!"
This gave Neil a start, and Kate said regretfully, "No, don't go away, Neil. Don't go away."
"Kate, what's wrong, baby?" He approached her, resting one hand on her shoulder and crouching in front of her.
"I?I wish I knew."
"Look. I'll tell you what. It's only Thursday, so I'm gonna go ahead and cancel your appointments for today and tomorrow. And then I'm gonna take you out to brunch and you can tell me what's goin' on, okay?"
She nodded simplistically, and Neil rubbed her shoulder before returning to his desk to make the dozen-or-so phone calls needed to cancel and reschedule appointments. Meanwhile, Kate wiped her tears and gathered her things and sat at her desk patiently.
* * * * *
End Chapter 1. CRITIQUES MORE THAN WELCOME.
~ver
